1 Facebook Algorithm matters!
2 Facebook’s new algorithm prefers quality over quantity
3 What happens to the News Feed?
4 Tips to work better with Mrs. Algorithm
5 Text Mining with R
6 Key takeaways

1 Facebook Algorithm matters!

According to the 2019 Sprout Social Index, Facebook is still the number one platform for marketers and consumers alike.

However, are you wondering why your Facebook reach and engagement is down? You’re not alone. In late 2019, the average reach for Facebook posts dropped by 2.2%. For brands, this meant that posts were only being seen by 5.5% of their followers. Larger brands with bigger follower counts saw averages even lower. Why?

Unless your name is Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook algorithm can sometimes seem like a mystery. While Facebook’s algorithm isn’t the only factor that impacts reach, it’s definitely one of the stronger factors. If you’re not keeping up with changes to the Facebook algorithm you’re going to have a much harder time getting your posts seen by the people who matter most to your business.

2 Facebook’s new algorithm prefers quality over quantity

Since the data controversy erupted around the social network in late 2017, Facebook has worked to improve transparency around how it ranks content on the News Feed. In fact, few things have inspired more cold sweats and headaches for social media marketers than the words “algorithm change”. And in recent years, there sure has been a lot of it.

Algorithm changes can explain some of the decline, but a large part is also due simply to increased competition on the platform. On top of that, the vast majority of pages have seen a continual decline in their organic reach over the past several years.

Source: Convince&Convert.com

The chart above shows how Facebook’s stock has increased while average organic page reach has decreased, implying some sort of correlation. Changes that Facebook has made to the News Feed algorithm mean that Facebook pages can count on much less organic reach than before.

Previously, Facebook would count a post as a view if it merely appeared on a user’s News Feed even if that post never appeared on the user’s screen. With the algorithm changes, a post must actually make it onto a user’s screen before Facebook will count it as a view. According to a post from Mark Zuckerberg, they made these changes to the News Feed algorithm as part of a new direction for the platform.

WAIT, there’s more about the algorithm

Facebook breaks the News Feed algorithm into four components:

Inventory, or the total amount of available content that could potentially show up in your feed
Signals, or the various considerations about the content that determine whether it shows in your feed
Predictions, or considerations about the person posting a piece of content
Overall score or the final number assigned to a piece of content based on the likelihood the user will respond positively to it.

3 What happens to the News Feed?

3.1 Meaningful interactions

The most significant change to the News Feed algorithm came in 2018, when Facebook decided to boost posts from friends and family and “posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people”.

Source: Facebook.com

Here’s a list of interactions the updated News Feed algorithm would mark as meaningful:

Multiple people replying to each other’s comments on a video they watched or an article they read in News Feed
A page responding to a person’s comment on their post
People commenting on or interacting with a page’s live video
People responding to page posts shared through Messenger
Any interactions that people have with a page post that has been reshared by a user

3.2 Video rankings

As video is arguably the king of content, any change to how videos are ranked on the platform is big news. A series of algorithm updates changed how videos are ranked in the News Feed, Facebook Watch and “More Videos” recommended videos, with the aim of bringing people even more relevant, meaningful content. Key factors affecting rankings are loyalty and intent, meaning that videos that people seek, and return to time after time, will be given more priority.

Source: giphy.com

3.3 Personalized experiences

As of May 2019, Facebook started directly surveying users to better understand the content they want to see. Facebook asked users things like

Who are your close friends?
What posts do you find valuable?
How important is content from thithis Facebook Group to you?
How interested are you in Pages you follow?

Based on those responses, Facebook updated its algorithm to make the News Feed better for users. This included showing users more content from Groups and Pages that they’ve been following the longest or engaging with the most. Other content would then get pushed lower in the News Feed.

3.4 Spammy, clickbait and engagement bait

In reducing clickbait content, the purpose is to demote content that is misleading, biased or outright false. According to Facebook, the key signal they use to determine “clickbait-ness” are headlines exaggerating or withholding information. For example, a headline like “You’ll be shocked by how shredded his abs are after eating this superfood” is a clickbait title, as it exaggerates the claim that one simple trick has led to such a significant abs improvement, and withholds key information about what the trick is.

Source: ClickZ.com

Or posts are considered like an engagement bait which boost the engagement of the users like this:

Source: Neilpatel.com

Let’s have a try!

Open your Facebook News Feed and choose a random post/ ad.

Click on the three dots in the upper right corner of a particular post/ad in your News Feed

What do you see there?

Try to customize what you see in the News Feed and customize your settings

Users can access “Why am I seeing this post?” from any News Feed item using the drop-down menu in the right-hand corner.

Facebook will then show the following information:

Why a certain post is being displayed in the news feed — for example, if the post is from friend, a group the user joined, or a page they followed.
Which factors have the greatest impact on the ranking of posts, including:
- How often you interact with posts from people, Pages or Groups
- How often you interact with a specific type of post, for example, videos, photos or links
- The popularity of the posts shared by the people, Pages, and Groups you follow.
Shortcuts to controls, such as See First, Unfollow, News Feed Preferences and Privacy Shortcuts.

Source: Searchenginejournal.com

4 Tips to work better with Mrs. Algorithm

4.1 Familiarize yourself with how the new algorithm works

The “signals” are the only component of the algorithm that you can control. You can see some of the signals the News Feed algorithm essentially scores as it determines whether a post should appear in a user’s feed. Some of the key signals include:

When someone posted a piece of content
What type of content the post is
How much engagement (e.g., likes, comments, shares) the post has gotten
Who’s been engaging with the post

How exactly do you influence those signals? Here are some of the bigger factors in Facebook’s algorithm that you need familiarize to improve your Facebook traffic:

Source: Thedigiterati.com

4.2 Start making videos and doing live video streams

Internet users have uploaded more video content online in just the past month than network television generated in 30 years.
In fact, online video now accounts for about two-thirds of all online traffic — a figure that could climb to 82% within the next two years.
According to current predictions, live video will account for 13% of all online video by 2021, which, in turn, could be over 80% of global web traffic and 85% of web traffic in the U.S.
To really put it into perspective, a single minute of video content is worth 1.8 million words.

And marketers have already figured it out!

81% of businesses are already using video as part of their marketing and traffic growth strategies.
That’s a pretty substantial increase, as just 63% of businesses were using video in 2017.
Of those businesses that aren’t yet making video content, 65% of them have plans to start by the end of the year.

Perhaps most importantly, Facebook’s algorithms seem to prioritize video over non-video content.

A study from Locowise discovered this when they looked at 500 different Pages. They found that when a page posts a video, an average of 16.7% of their fans will see it. So, when a page posts a video to Facebook, it gets substantially more reach than links, photos, and text content. This goes to show that video is crucial when it comes to marketing in the Digital Age, and it will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. For someone who wants to increase their traffic and overall presence on Facebook, video could be the secret to their success.

Some tips while making video content for Facebook:

Since you can’t know whether your viewers will have the volume on or off, you should add captions to your videos to ensure that you get your message across. Whenever possible, record and export your videos at a resolution of 1080p or 720p at the bare minimum, as videos often drop in quality when you upload them

4.3 Make sure your content is high in quality and offers real value

Unfortunately, your opinion of high-quality content doesn’t always matter. Instead, it’s all in the eyes of your customers.

What content do they like to see?
What kind of content do they find most valuable?
What content do they find emotionally or intellectually engaging?

For instance, your customers consist of people who are looking for tips about beauty and fashion, your content should focus on topics within that niche.

Or you post a link to Facebook, you can include a concise, accurate description that features particular buzzwords from the article so that your audience can quickly tell what the article is about.

4.4 Actively engage with your audience

There are two critical Facebook traffic-generation concepts to master: reach (passive) and engagement (active). Basically, “reach” refers to how many people see your post. “Engagement” refers to interactions with your post, such as likes, comments, shares, and so on.

Obviously, both are important for different reasons. It’s kind of a Catch-22: you can’t get meaningful engagement without a big enough reach. But you also can’t increase reach today without engagement. And that’s a big problem because most pages have way less organic reach with these new algorithm updates.

That’s why you need new ways to cultivate engagement every chance you get. And one of the best ways to get your audience to engage is to have “meaningful interactions” with them. For example, when someone comments on something you’ve posted, respond to that person’s comment and try to dialogue back and forth with users by creating a conversation. When you acknowledge a person, you give them a feeling of validation that causes him or her to be more likely to engage with your future content. You’re building relationships with members of your audience. In turn, they become more likely to share your content with the hundreds or thousands of people in their networks.

4.5 Promote the right posts at the right time

Fewer businesses are able to rely on organic reach alone with these algorithm changes. But, at the same time, being smart with your Facebook advertising budget is more important than ever. So, how do you know which posts you should pay to boost and which posts you shouldn’t? Everything you need is right there in your analytic data under Facebook Insights.

Source: searchenginejournal.com

When you use them strategically, boosted posts can have an immense effect on your traffic by increasing your reach and engagement. You can start with creating a budget for Facebook Ads.

Once you set a budget, you have to decide how much of that budget you want to spend promoting the right posts. Don’t just pay to promote every new post. Why? Because you don’t know for sure whether those will resonate with your audience or not. Instead, use the best posts from the past. Rely on your Insights data to figure out which posts are already your top performers. Check out “Post types” to get a read on how current ones are performing, then put your budget behind those to reach new audiences.

Source: constantcontact.com

Within the “Posts tab”, you’ll discover two graphs that illustrate the average number of fans who saw any posts on Facebook by day of the week and the average number of fans who saw any posts in an hour. You should try to find your engagement sweet spot by determining the intersection of time when the majority of your audience is on Facebook and the time when the least overall posting is occurring.

Source: constantcontact.com

4.6 AVOID these practices for best results

Don’t post more than two or three times per day. If you post more than that, your content will be competing with itself. Plus, it’s virtually impossible to enforce quality standards when you have excessive output.
Don’t overuse hashtags. You can use hashtags occasionally to punctuate a piece of content or to make it easily searchable. But audiences are actually put off by hashtags when you string lots of them together in a single post.
Don’t forget who your audience is. Use the demographic data available to you (in Facebook Insights) and tailor your content to your actual audience.

By simply avoiding these practices, you’ll start attracting traffic to your Page in no time. The best part is that these tips really aren’t that hard to implement. You just need to think about what you’re posting, why you’re posting it, how you’re posting it, and who you’re posting it for.

5 Text Mining with R

Text mining methods allow us to highlight the most frequently used keywords in texts. One can create a word cloud which is a visual representation of text data. R is a useful free tool to implement the procedure of creating word clouds. For digital marketers, using word clouds allows them to get overall needs and interests of the customers through their comments on the posts. Here are some guidelines of creating word clouds with R from dataset provided by developers.facebook.com.

In this example we take a dataset from Facebook posts of Donald Trump to create a word cloud.

Step 1: Install and load the required packages

# Install
 install.packages("tm")  # for text mining
 install.packages("SnowballC") # for text stemming
 install.packages("wordcloud") # word-cloud generator 
 install.packages("RColorBrewer") # color palettes

# Load Libraries

library("tm")
library("SnowballC")
library("wordcloud")
library("RColorBrewer")

Step 2: Load text using corpus () function from text mining (tm) package

FBStatus <- readLines("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linhvu00/Lecture-note-for-Data-Science/main/Donalds%20FB%20Status.csv")

# Load the data as a corpus

cloud <- Corpus(VectorSource(FBStatus))

Step 3: Transformation is performed using tm_map () function to replace for example special characters or URLs from the text.

The R code below can be used to clean your text.

# Removing URLs using gsub () function
removeURL <- function(x) gsub("(f|ht)(tp)(s?)(://)([^\\.]*)[\\.|/](\\S*)", "", x)
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, removeURL)

# Convert the text to lower case
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, content_transformer(tolower))

# Remove unnecessary words like type of Status (link, photo, video etc.) 
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, removeWords, c("timeline", "photo(s?)", "type"," – ", "link", "video", "status"))

# Remove Punctuation
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, removePunctuation)

# Remove numbers
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, removeNumbers)

# Remove english common stopwords
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, removeWords, stopwords("english"))

# Text stemming reduces words to their root form. For example, words like "moving", "moved" and "moves" will be reduced to the root word "move".
# cloud <- tm_map(cloud, stemDocument)

# remove white spaces
cloud <- tm_map(cloud, stripWhitespace)

Step 4: Build a term-document-matrix. Document matrix is a table containing the frequency of the words.

# creating term-document matrix

dtm <- TermDocumentMatrix(cloud)
mtx <- as.matrix(dtm)
v <- sort(rowSums(mtx),decreasing=TRUE)
d <- data.frame(word = names(v),freq=v)
head(d, 10)

Step 5: Generate the word cloud

set.seed(1234)
wordcloud(words = d$word, freq = d$freq, min.freq = 1,
          max.words=150, random.order=FALSE, rot.per=0.35, 
          colors=brewer.pal(8, "Dark2"))

The above word cloud clearly shows that “trump”, “will”, “great”, “america” and “thank” are the five most frequently used words in Facebook posts of Donald Trump.

6 Key takeaways

If you’re trying to get more traffic to your Facebook Page, it’s natural to think that more content is better. But you’d be wrong. With Facebook’s new algorithm, organic traffic is difficult to come by. If you want to maximize your efforts, you need to focus on quality over quantity.
Video content is huge on Facebook. If you’re posting less, you’ll find the best return on your investment by creating high-quality videos.
In every post, offer your viewers real value.
There is endless content on the Internet, so you need to post high-quality content to stand out and gain a loyal following.
As your fans engage with your content, interact with them to build relationships and stimulate more engagement
Using R to create word clouds which provide the most frequently used words of the followers/customers to understand their interests and needs.
Finally, don’t be afraid to boost some of your posts. But be strategic about which posts you boost. Invest in the ones that you’ve already seen users engage with to ensure that you don’t waste your marketing budget on a post that won’t perform well.